Welcome back to Geek Time, advanced. How are you doing Lulu?

Hi, Brad, I'm doing fine and ready to continue our talk about your drifting and racing life in Japan.

Yeah, so I just actually got back from the Tokyo Auto salon which is one of the biggest shows, if car shows in Japan every year they have it in January, it was a really great event.

Is it like a general car show or a car show more like for race cars and stuff?

They have everything, right. They have cars that you might drive every day like all the big companies, TOYOTA, NISSAN, even BYD was there, they had some of their cars. But all the big companies are there.

But because it's also for car parts and all of that a lot of people bring their race cars, they bring like modification parts and so all those all... everything’s there, racing...

They do even have some they have like F1 cars there and they have kind of like some demonstrations with the F1 cars and drifting as well.

So it's not just for racing but it's also for regular cars as well.

This is for any car enthusiasts. Right?

Pretty much, yeah.

I mean how many days?

It starts on Friday and oftentimes the Friday is for a lot of people in the industry. But you can get tickets and go on the Friday.

But most of the time because most people are working that day, Saturday and Sunday are the days that people usually go. Monday is usually the holiday. But that's usually they have everyone like packing everything up that day. So no one goes to the show on Monday.

There's one in Osaka next month that's actually 4 days that you can go Friday, Saturday and Sunday, but...

Are you going as well?

People usually just go one day.

I'm actually planning to go on the Friday, because I'm gonna go to Beijing on the Saturday.

Wow, okay. But like what do you do at these...are you just there to see stuff to talk to people to actually buy things? I don't know how these kind of car shows work really.

Actually I bought an air filter. It's a race car air filter for my K racing car while I was there. I didn't buy any other parts, but usually they have like a big discount like 20%, 30% off car parts.

I didn't buy anything simply, because I've already kind of got a lot of the parts that I need for my current project, but it's a really nice place to go because you can see all the parts that you can buy.

And so they have all the displays and they show you the parts, they show you how they work. You can talk to the people directly from the company and ask them.

There are rules for what car parts you can actually put on a car if you're gonna drive it on the road, and the companies can give you forms, and so if you use their part, and you get your car checked for the yearly checkup, you have to have these forms to show that this part is documented.

And so you can go there and you can talk to them, and find out whether or not their parts are able to be used on a street car, or if you have to kind of like hide the fact that you're using their part.

I see, I see. Last time you mentioned something quite interesting, you said obviously you go to the racing circuit to race, but there are also street racing. Come on that's gotta be illegal, right? Street racing causes a lot of noise and then its risks.

Right. Now in the US there's a lot of street racing and there's all you often see that in the news where there's these big huge events everyone gets together, but they cause a lot of problems for people, and so the police try to shut them down as quickly as possible.

Yeah.

Street racing is a little bit different in Japan where it is illegal and you're not supposed to do it. If like I was street racing, I could easily lose my visa. So it's not something I’m...

Can I just confirm with you? Because growing up watching some Japanese movies or TV shows, street racing seems to be one of those... seems to be very closely linked with like organized crimes, and you see these people who are literally like Japanese mafia.

Is that connected or is street racing completely different from what I'm picturing it.

Yeah, for some groups, there are some connections, like I'm pretty sure there are people who are in some gangs or something like that they do street racing. There are like what's called the Bōsōzoku (暴走族) which are like the street tribes.

Yeah, exactly.

Yeah, they're not necessarily so much street racers, but it was actually kind of funny is the Bōsōzoku while they do cause problems for some racers, they actually help other racers like when the police come to stop people from racing. The bosozoku will like drive in front of the police car very slowly, so the police car can't follow the racers.

Okay, I see, but there are also other races who are genuinely just interested in a racing.

Yeah, most street racers are not in any way connected to organized crime or anything like that. Most street racers are just people going out onto the road and having fun. There are people who go on like the loop lines and like Tokyo and Osaka, and they'll go really high speed, they usually go really late at night so there's not anyone else on the roads really.

Yeah, there are illegal street racing in Beijing as well late at night.

Yeah. I've heard about that, yeah. Like there's also people like in the mountains doing this as well. Most of the time if you're not causing a nuisance, if you're not doing anything really bad, the police kind of look the other way, because it was kind of like they kind of see it as they're out having fun they're doing the thing they like as long as...

They’re not causing any trouble?

Exactly.

There will be like the guys up on the mountains doing drifting and things like that, and the police occasionally will come drive through the mountains and be like waking their finger "No, no, no."

But they won't arrest you anything.

Yeah, and it's actually really funny. There's like guys occasionally they'll have an accident though. Go off the side of their car will go off the side of the road. They'll call a tow company and there's usually like a tow company with no questions asked they just come tow the car.

“We do this all the time.”

They write it off as like a just a regular car accident.

Yeah, regular accidents.

And a lot of insurance companies kind of just look the other way as well, right? They called the insurance company. See I got into car accident. You give them the information, they fix the car up, and everything like that.

Okay. So since you're not planning to go on the street doing illegal street racing anytime soon as a Gaijin(日語(yǔ)“外人”（がいじん，Gaijin）), what about your actual race plans? Are you gonna get more race licenses and get into more races?

I was actually planning on doing it last month. I just everything got really busy. So my plan is to get some of the basics racing licenses that way I can start entering a few races this year and maybe even more next year. It was like once you get into races, once you start getting into them and you start like acquiring wins or points, then you can use those to kind of move into more advanced racing.

Once you get somewhere like if you have you like any videos online like if you're doing YouTube or something like that, using your social media, you can get sponsors. If you're good at racing, you can get sponsors, so you can get free parts, you can even get money for your car to race.

And so...

Just wait till 酒館, wait till our business grow up, then we can sponsor, you can be our 酒館 racer.

Exactly.

Okay, I see. And we can sponsor you some free car parts maybe in the future. Yeah, you do videos, you can do live streaming videos for us.

Alright. But usually you're not just racing alone, right? There is usually a team. Do you have your own team right now?

When I was in university, I kind of joked and I said I'm gonna start a race team and it's gonna be called Garage Team Moriyama. My last name Hardt actually has the same meaning. It means the forest on the mountain. So Moriyama is kind of like a mountain forest, right forest mountain.

Okay. It's like Moriyama like 森山. Interesting and that's what your last name meant. Your last name is German, isn't it? It's Germanic.

I jokingly said I was going to start a race team and now here I am a little bit more than a decade later and it's actually something that might happen.

Wow.

With my K car, if I do like a endurance race something that several hours long, you have to have three or four people racing the car, you have to like separate the time up into different one person isn't allowed to race the whole time, they have a limitation, one person can do 1 hour.

Then they have to be out of the car for 1 hour and then they can come back.

But like you have to have two or three people racing in a car, my plan is to get two or three of my classmates to come race with me or something like that. Just to get started.

Join your team Moriyama.

Right.

Alright.

But I've heard that you once told me that your ultimate goal is to... is to get your own garage or even get start your own business.

Yeah, so like the whole reason why I actually looked into the current school that I'm at now, is because I was looking into what I would need to start a garage or do something like that. And they said you need to get this kind of license. And so I looked into how to get my license for that.

And this was one of the schools that came up. I was looking at other schools as well, but this was the only one that had like the motor sports engineering program attached to that. And so I was like that's exactly what I wanna do. But my plan is to build my own garage.

Now at first I probably just gonna have a garage where I can work on cars. Eventually it depends on how things work out. I may turn that into a business.

And perhaps also work on other people's cars, race cars and get into that.

Exactly.

How many cars do you own right now?

In Japan, 5.

Five. And where do you even park them since you don't have a garage right now?

I do have a garage underneath my apartment for one car. So, I have that car there. Now at the circuit that I do drifting at, I have two parking spots, so I have two cars that I use for drifting and so those cars are parked there.

Park your cars at the circuit. I see, I see.

And then my two other cars are just in a parking lot really close to my apartment.

I see, you're really serious about this, in the future to hear the progress you make on this project.

Okay, and we're gonna wrap up here, and we're sending out wishes to everyone that you can all pursue your dreams, your childhood or your university time dreams like Brad is doing.

So thank you, Brad, for coming to the show and sharing your life in Japan with us.

No problem.

Yeah, just remember guys. If you can't do something now, don't give up, it might happen in a year, might happen in two, might happen in ten. If you just keep going, eventually you'll get there.

Yeah, exactly. Very good suggestion. Thank you, Brad, for coming to the show. We'll see you next time.

See you next time everyone.

Bye.

Bye bye.